Topic: What happens when the block reward halves to 25? (Read 12840 times)

BitPay didn't even exist in the 2011 bubble.  Now they have something like 1,100 merchants onboard.

SatoshiDICE didn't exist even in March of this year.  Now there are more than 10K BTC wagered each day.   (Remember, just 7,200 BTC are mined each day).   Sure, a single player will wager sometimes hundreds of BTC in a day, but this is real demand for coins that didn't exist a year ago.   Then add all the other online gaming methods and there's even more places that bitcoins go which were'nt around a year ago.

Add in BitcoinStore.com being price competitive with NewEgg and Amazon, and there should be even more reasons to be optimistic because this not only will prove that a merchant can do good volume of bitcoin sales, it shows that if merchants don't start accepting bitcoins themselves, they are opening the door for competitors to come in and grab market share.

And then the barriers to entry are so much lower.  Anyone with a smartphone can figure out Blockchain for Android or iOS.   Buying bitcoins is still not a hassle, but the options are continually improving.    Look how many traders are listed on LocalBitcoins -- which are not just conversions between bitcoin and fiat but are building local community.

There still aren't many good ways to short bitcoins, so if a rally happens it is probably going to be greater and faster than most are expecting.   I could see a lot of panic buying occurring due to the uncertainty from the halving of new coin supply.

With less than a month to go, I find Brunic's suggestion of a gradual rise in the exchange rate to be most likely.

Why? Demand is currently about USD$550,000 per week, or approximately $78,500 per day - that's just to keep the price relatively even, based exclusively on Gox numbers (~80% of open exchange markets). If that level of demand remains after the Great Halving (had to say it), then price will be rapidly bid up. However, there are other factors involved which we'll list, with a minus (-) denoting negative price pressure and a plus (+) for positive or upward pressure:

• + Great Halving
• + Demand remains stable
• - Additional coins may be sold from existing stock
• - ASIC devices are delivered
• + GPU mining force reduction
• + CPU/GPU botnet processing share decrease

We could assign weighted values to each item depending on subjective assessment of impact, but without knowing how quickly the GPU->ASIC transition will be, or how many coins from existing stock will be sold at market, we're grasping at straws.

Although unreliable and unscientific, there does seem to be a near-insatiable demand for bitcoins through off-exchange OTC channels. Where this demand is coming from, and whether it will spill over to affect the more official pricing is not within a reasonable range of estimation.

Assuming that the only variables which experience major shifts are the Great Halving and the introduction of ASICs, I think it's very reasonable to expect a sustained rise to and through the $12.60 level toward the low $20s. It's hard to see demand significantly decreasing at this point, and if it rises by ~30% from present the 2011 high comes into view - sustainably.

If additional stock is liquidated, the pace of price rise will be slowed somewhat. That's all, though. Whether it takes weeks or months, the price will rise against flowing stock. Aside from that, the most influential wildcard remains the ASIC situation - making it cheaper to generate bitcoins will draw competition. The difficulty may go 100x higher than it is now, maybe further. During that ASIC proliferation period, there will be downward pressure on prices as miners seek to recoup their hardware investment - with the ability to generate more efficiently, they can offer at lower rates than with FPGA or GPU systems.

The entire Bitcoin system is still vulnerable to failure at this point, and one thing is certain - volatility will rear its head. Keep in mind that the size of the Bitcoin economy is now much greater than it was in the 2011 bubble, so swings in a $10 range won't be as enormous as they would've been then. They will be immensely profitable moves.

thank you, captain obvious.

+1

thats right ..and one reason is that lot of miners arent in it for the short run and some don,t want $ they want BTC...

This is a crazy prediction. It is extremely unlikely that this will happen simply because it depends on a long chain of independent unpredictable events:

"Shortly before the split, people will buy up BTC to hold onto for the long term because eventually the price will go up significantly.  That means a gigantic price spike!"

There is no reason for people to buy a lot of BTC suddenly because of something that will happen eventually. There will be no gigantic spike for the reason you give.

"Then, when the blocks actually do split, the price will start to float upwards until too many decide that's "good enough" and dump off their coins."

Assuming the price rises, then maybe some people might sell, but maybe more people will buy. You can't predict when or if people will dump their coins and what effect it might have.

"A little sustained $0.50 dip after weeks of slow raising will spook everyone into thinking they missed the opportunity to sell off their BTC at top price so there will be a massive dump."

How can you possibly come up with $0.50? Why should such a drop "spook" a large number of people. The price of BTC has recently gone up and down by more than 0.5 BTC and nobody has been spooked into a selloff.

Anyway, your story is full of holes, as are all stories like this. It's an entertaining good story, but it is complete fiction. The problem with these stories that people invent is that they expect everyone to act similarly and simultaneously and they assume people will act irrationally. Furthermore, as I mentioned at the  start, they depend on a long chain of independent and unpredictable events. If the first part of the story is off by just a little, then the entire story is wrong.

This could happen, but I expect there will be a delay between the halving and the price floating up.  In that time there could be a dip that panics some people.

agreed that it's  a likely scenario - but a month later, where will it be? a month after that? we're in for a heck of a winter. it MIGHT stabilize by march, but since we know Avalon's are only shipping in late feb (for main production run) even that's unlikely, in my opinion.

I'm so-so at predicting swings in the price of BTC but this one's so gimme, I have to.  Shortly before the split, people will buy up BTC to hold onto for the long term because eventually the price will go up significantly.  That means a gigantic price spike!  Then, when the blocks actually do split, the price will start to float upwards until too many decide that's "good enough" and dump off their coins.  A little sustained $0.50 dip after weeks of slow raising will spook everyone into thinking they missed the opportunity to sell off their BTC at top price so there will be a massive dump.  The miners waiting for the price to stop going up to sell and pay off their ASIC mining hardware debts will dump em off too.  That seems extremely likely to happen and similar things have happened in the past.

What will happen is the value of bitcoins will slightly increase. Hoard them.

would be dumb, to sell.  they would hold if they were smart.

+1

Last I checked, this subforum was called "mining speculation" 

lot of factors coming into play. 

-popularity of ASIC mining
- assumptions that ASIC miners won't hold
- reward halving.

anyone who says they know what's going to happen
to the value of btc post reward halving
is just a speculator.

Maybe eCSSam, since it has been renamed to eComStation.

when?
and will you become os1sam at that time? 

Hey, I still have most of my OS/2 2.0 floppies, 3.5" though, not the 5 1/4, bummer those would be worth something.

OS/2 is still halving, by the way.

You could make a currency based on OS/2 floppy discs.  I know they aren't making any more of those.

That would be a great analogy if only currency was based on gold anymore.  Too bad it's not.  If it were we probably wouldn't need bitcoin.

I thought that was ASIC's reaching critical mass?!?!

Probably right on this one.

I'll just leave this here.. http://business.ftc.gov/documents/alt051-selling-internet-prompt-delivery-rules